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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dg68VCi9zoE

Like most good folktales, the story of Pesach doesn’t really have a beginning.  Wherever you jump into it, there’s always a bit of backstory to understand.  But one popular place to jump in is this:  Pharaoh has decreed that his Israelite slaves can only have daughters.  If they have sons, the sons will be killed.  Yocheved and her husband Amram have a baby, and it’s a boy.  Not wanting him to be killed, Yocheved places the boy in a basket and sets the basket floating on the Nile – she’d prefer to trust her baby to the whims of fate rather than to a certain death upon discovery.

We know that this baby will be found by Pharaoh’s daughter and will grow up to be Moses, star of the Pesach story.  But Yocheved doesn’t know that when she sets that basket in the water.  This song takes place in that strange, undefined time when a basket containing a child floats on the waves of the Nile.  The river itself seems to know that there’s a beloved child in that basket, and the waters cradle him, and do not swamp the basket.  The waves, in their restraint, are better than Pharaoh.  He would kill the baby.  They rock him gently, away from people, alone in the care of the great River Nile.

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I bought a state-specific wildflower seed mix that I sprinkled in my garden this year and the sprouts are everywhere. I am extremely excited to get my milkweed in there too; sprouts have onlt just started emerging for it.

I want to flood my home with bugs and plants and birds and all other critters that people think of as pests. I want my yard to have life.

[lapsed-bookworm]

I am once again thinking about the term "suicide survivors". How it's a term that rightfully belongs to those that lived through a suicide attempt, that literally survived suicide. How instead it means those that lived through someone else's death. How it neans "surviving" in only the archaic use 'survived by" used in obituaries. How suicide "survivors" lived through something that was never going to kill them, that was never even a threat to their life.

How we are only ever a footnote in the stories of others. We're a tragedy that happens to people, a cautionary tale if we die and inspiration porn if we live. How, forever long we do live, we were suicidal, past tense, because it makes people too uncomfortable too acknowledge that suicidality is chronic (whether pathological or environmental).

How everyone wants to do suicide prevention but no one wants to acknowledge the people at the center of it. How it's never actually about our needs - or even about our safety, really. It doesn't matter what trauma or pain we must endure - they'll have us live if it kills us. Never mind social programs to give us housing, food, security, to make us want to live - it's our responsibility to find someone to tell us it's all in our heads and we need meds to fix us, because it's CRAZY to want to die. Make sure the hotlines can all call the cops if we don't comply.

Don't we know how selfish it is to want to not be in pain and be so desperate that we're willing to die for it? Don't we know how selfish it is to not have any access to the things we need to survive? Don't we know that suicidal depression is really our duty to get over, because obviously if we don't take meds that don't work or that make us sick, if we don't submit to medical gaslighting, if we don't "try" to recover, it's not like it's an illness or a disability! It's selfishness, a character flaw.

Don't we know that we're the selfish ones, when they make our struggling, our illness, our deaths, about us and not them?

It's sanism at its most basic. We're not reliable narrators of our own experiences. We're not the main characters of even our own stories. We're there to be a single pretty tear rolling down the cheek of our loved ones. We're tragedy-as-an-object, as an object lesson. "Make sure you pick yourself up by your bootstraps seek help so you don't become an inconvenience for us hurt your loved ones." Even STILL the focus is not on the harm done to yourself, except as a moral failure in that it harms the healthy people around you.

Quite frankly, I'm sick of it. I don't ever want someone to call themselves a "suicide survivor" again who means it not as "I've survived BEING suicidal" but as "I lived through someone else being in so much pain that they took their own life over it". Not when there still exist people that have survived attempts or are actively suicidal. This is our narrative, not one for you to center yourselves in.

I will not go so far as to say your grief is selfish. That would be cruel. But your grief IS about someone else. This is still THEIR story.

It is likewise the same pain, the same trauma, and the same ableism and sanism we face over it, for those of us who have actually survived it, more than it is that of those who have never stood on that edge. It is the same decentering of our own stories when we go through the exact same thing.

It is the same surviving another day of being suicidal, another attempt, and hearing people who have either never been suicidal or simply are not talking about their own survivorship of suicidality, have the audacity to call themselves survivors of something that they never survived. To take something that KILLED someone they love and claim to be survivors of it.

Cancer survivors had cancer. Automobile collision survivors were in collisions. Survivors of critical illnesses or disabling/severe injuries lived through those illnesses or injuries affecting THEIR lives. But suddenly when a deadly chronic illness kills someone, in this one case, the survivors are the ones who watched someone die of it?

Nah. This isn't a mass threat like a shooting or a pandemic, where your life was ever in danger. You're not the survivor. Your grief is valid, and there absolutely needs to be times and places where being a GRIEF survivor is centered, where your healing and well-being is focused on.

But let those of us who we so sick we nearly died for it, or DID die from it, be the center of THAT story.

Dead men tell no tales, so at least have the grace to let the echoes of our voices remain, unspoken over. And for gods' sakes, remember that there are people that DID make it through alive, that we're still talking, that our voices are most important in a conversation about OUR potentially deadly illnesses.

We're still here telling our own tales.

#suicidal

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look.. i’m here for transgirls as much as the next guy. but honestly, after a while the oh i’d fuck her. id let her fuck me posts, start to scream objectification and hypersexualization. if your only support for trans women is how fuckable you think they are… you’re not really supporting them are you?

like yeah.. the dolls are hot asf and very fuckable.. but bitch did you know she can paint? or is a designer? or has extensive knowledge about birds? maybe sis is holding down 3 jobs right now! have you asked that woman if she needs a hug? like damn.

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its 4/20 please take some time to remember everyone that has died / been incarcerated / lost any chance at a normal life for your right to smoke ur fuckin mids.

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About the AO3 "No Guest Comments for a while" warning

If you're not following any of AO3's social media accounts you might be in the dark as to what kind of "spam comments" have engendered this banner at the top of the site:

These spam comments have been posted about a great deal on the AO3 subreddit for the past couple of days. Initially they comprised a bunch of guest (logged out users) bot comments that insulted authors by suggesting they were using AI and not writing their own fics. Some examples, from the subreddit:

But it then escalated to outright graphic porn images and gifs being posted in comments, again by logged out 'Guest' accounts. Obviously, I'm not going to give examples of those, but between these two bot infestations, AO3 has clearly decided to act and has temporarily closed the ability to post comments for users who are not logged in with an AO3 account.

Unfortunately, this means that genuine readers who don't have an AO3 account won't be able to leave comments on fics that they enjoy.

If you are a genuine reader who doesn't yet have an AO3 account, I strongly suggest getting yourself on the waiting list for one. More and more AO3 authors are now locking their fics down to registered users only - either due to these bot comments or concerns about AI scraping their work - which means you're probably missing out on a lot of great stuff.

Hopefully guest commenting will be enabled again at some point soon, but I suggest not waiting until then. Get yourself on that list.

Wait times are going to be longer than usual at the moment, due to the current Wattpad purge [info on Fanlore | Wattpad subreddit thread], but if you're in line, then your invite will come through eventually.

Update: There's now a Megathread about this on the AO3 subreddit.

[lapsed-bookworm]

How fucking annoying is it when you feel so restless with creative energy but you can’t decide what to do with it and when you finally try to create something it comes out shit so you just give up and sit there being all creatively annoyed and jittery.

#encouragement #no writing is wasted #for tagging purposes

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"School districts that don’t respect transgender and nonbinary students’ pronouns or force them to use restrooms that don’t align with their gender identity could be committing federal civil rights violations beginning this fall.

Today, the U.S. Department of Education announced the issuance of a final rule under Title IX to protect people in public schools from sex-based discrimination and harassment. The announcement marks a significant update in federal efforts to combat sex discrimination in federally funded educational institutions. During a call with reporters, Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona emphasized the administration’s dedication to ensuring that Title IX effectively serves all students by providing safe, welcoming, and rights-respecting educational environments."

Read the full piece here

[lapsed-bookworm]

beep beep sometimes when you have been in survival mode for a long time the parts of you dedicated to Wanting Things atrophy and you forget how to envision a future that feels rewarding because you are busy with the business of staying alive, and it can seem like your life must be pointless because you can’t imagine any long term goals. sometimes even when you leave survival mode you can’t remember how to Want Things. that doesn’t mean you need to give up on having a good and fulfilling life, it just means that Wanting Things is a muscle you need to gradually strengthen. the part of you that has dreams and aspirations is still there, it just fell asleep, but if you wiggle it enough it can and will regain feeling. it’s okay to start small

#encouragement #probably already reblogged

[lapsed-bookworm]

[Image Description: A screenshot of text that reads:

Indicators An indicator is a characteristic that suggest an individual: - May be in the process of radicalizing to violence - Is in the process of radicalizing to violence - Has already radicalized to violence - Unlike risk factors, indicators may be predictive - Indicators are generally observable behavioral changes -- These changes may be concerning to the individuals friends, co-workers, or loved ones

Indicators include: - Expressing acceptance of violence as a necessary means to achieve ideological goals - Consuming or sharing violent extremist videos, media, and/or messaging, resharing, or linking to violent extremists - Participating in online sites or groups that promote violent extremism - Expressing a desire to hurt others - Praising previous attacks - Verbalizing intent - Making violent outbursts - Engaging in threatening or otherwise concerning communication - Threatening someone - Making otherwise concerning statements (e.g., paranoid statements or statements about imminent death) - Pre-occupation or fixation to the point that it negatively impacts their life, such as a preoccupation with death or with previous attacks

/End of description.]

I attended a seminar today on building community resilience to radicalization to violence. The lecture was really informative and covered a wide spectrum of different types of extremism, including political, gender motivated, racial, etc. I don't feel the need to share all of the information here, because the focus was primarily on radicalization in my state specifically, but I did want to share this specific part on identifying indicators that someone is on the path to, if not fully, radicalized:

If you see any of these in your community, call it out!

This is what has been proven to lead to mass attacks against marginalized groups.

If you see something, say something!

#image description

[lapsed-bookworm]

I'm writing a research paper on how having a feeding tube impacts a person's social life, but most of the research that's already out there focuses on how a person's feeding tube impacts their family's/caretaker's life. If you:

have ever used a feeding tube,

are 18 or older,

are an american,

would like to share your experience of having a feeding tube, and

have half an hour or so free before April 27,

please dm me so we can chat! quick preemptive faq:

I do not need to know your name, I would be using a pseudonym for the paper

I do need to know your age, or at least an age range

I'm probably only going to talk to a couple people

Our conversation would be typed, not oral

I know "research paper" makes it sound high stakes but it would really be just a chill casual conversation

[lapsed-bookworm]

Well, according to the email I got today, the Affordable Connectivity Program has not had its funding renewed. For everyone on it, I advise talking to your provider as soon as you can, especially if they talked you into an upgrade because it was still free with what the program covers. In addition, they recommend applying for the Lifeline program to cover part of the remaining cost. If you didn't get the email, you can apply for the Lifeline program here. You will be allowed to keep any devices that you got as a result of the ACP, such as a free router. Your connectivity services will not be interrupted, but they will be charged for soon. They estimate that the benefits will end in April 2024, so don't plan for that bill to be covered.

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ADHD at night: I could write a book. I could get my Master’s Degree. I could go to the club and come home with 12 new friends. I could get a job at that club and meet the mother of my children. I could cure every disease and use my wealth to bring world peace.

ADHD during the day: Fold laundry too hard :( Come back next week

[lapsed-bookworm]

so when straight people ask me why I say I’m “queer” or “gay” instead of sharing my actual identity as a panromantic demisexual non-binary sapphic queer I just tell them “ok look, when you’re talking to someone who isn’t local and they ask you where you’re from and you either say the name of the largest city nearby or ‘town name, suburb of large nearby city’ so they can get some geographical context of where you’re located right, bc they’re probably not going to know the name of the little town you actually live in.”

but if you’re talking to a local you can say the name of your actual town bc they have a greater chance of knowing where/what that is.

ok well when I’m talking to a straight person I start with queer bc chances are they aren’t as familiar with the context of all the little towns in that big queer city and need gps (gay positioning system) to find me.

if I’m talking to another queer person and I say I live in a suburb of gay city in a town called panromantic on the demisexual side of the tracks which is in the county of queer and I live off the intersection of non-binary and sapphic, they’d probably be able to find me with little to no problems, make sense?

#humor #food for thought #queer

[lapsed-bookworm]

BEHOLD

smiling bat :)

based on this guy ^ my favorite little guy from British Library Harley MS 3244 f 55v

[lapsed-bookworm]

Me: I just want to sleep

Brain: Hey remember that internet argument you got into like ten years ago with someone you can’t even remember

Me: Please I’m so tired

Brain: I’ve written a 400,000 word rebuttal which I am going to narrate to you now

Me: please

Brain: Chapter One: How Dare You

#humor